Released on 8 November 1971, the untitled fourth studio album by the English rock band Led Zeppelin, commonly known as Led Zeppelin IV, It was produced by the band's guitarist, Jimmy Page, and recorded between December 1970 and February 1971, mostly in the country house Headley Grange. The album contains one of the band's best-known recordings, the eight-minute-long "Stairway to Heaven". The album spawned the singles "Black Dog"/"Misty Mountain Hop", & "Rock And Roll"/"Four Sticks."
The informal recording environment inspired the band, allowing them to try different arrangements of material and create songs in various styles. After the previous album Led Zeppelin III received lukewarm reviews from critics, they decided their fourth album would officially be untitled and represented instead by four symbols – one chosen by each band member – without featuring the name or any other details on the cover. Unlike the prior two albums, the band was joined by guest musicians: singer Sandy Denny on "The Battle of Evermore", and pianist Ian Stewart on "Rock and Roll". As with prior albums, most of the material was written by the band, though there was one cover song, a hard rock re-interpretation of the Memphis Minnie blues song "When the Levee Breaks".
Following the release of Led Zeppelin III in October 1970, the group took a break from live performances to concentrate on recording a follow-up. They turned down all touring offers, including a proposed New Year's Eve gig that would have been broadcast on television. They returned to Bron-Yr-Aur, a country house in Snowdonia, Wales, to write new material.
Recording sessions for the album began at Island Records' new studios on Basing Street in London on 5 December 1970, with the recording of "Black Dog". The group had considered Mick Jagger's home, Stargroves, as a recording location, but decided it was too expensive. They subsequently moved the following month to Headley Grange, a country house in Hampshire, England, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio and engineer Andy Johns, with the Stones' Ian Stewart assisting. Johns had just worked on engineering Sticky Fingers and recommended the mobile studio. Guitarist and producer Jimmy Page later recalled: "We needed the sort of facilities where we could have a cup of tea and wander around the garden and go in and do what we had to do." This relaxed, atmospheric environment at Headley Grange also provided other advantages for the band, as they were able to capture spontaneous performances immediately, with some tracks arising from the communal jamming. Bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones remembered there was no bar or leisure facilities, but this helped focus the group on the music without being distracted.
Once the basic tracks had been recorded, the band added overdubs at Island Studios in February. The band spent five days at Island, before Page then took the multitrack tapes to Sunset Sound in Los Angeles for mixing on 9 February, on Johns's recommendation, with a plan for an April 1971 release. Mixing would take ten days, before Page travelled back to London with the newly mixed material. The band had a playback at Olympic Studios. The band disliked the results, and so after touring through the spring and early summer, Page remixed the whole album in July.
The album opened with "Black Dog" was named after a dog that hung around Headley Grange during recording. The riff was written by Page and Jones, while the a cappella section was influenced by Fleetwood Mac's "Oh Well". Singer Robert Plant wrote the lyrics, and later sang portions of the song during solo concerts. The guitar solos on the outro were recorded directly into the desk, without using an amplifier. "Rock and Roll" was a collaboration with Stewart that came out of a jam early in the recording sessions at Headley Grange. Drummer John Bonham created the introduction, which came from jamming around the intro to Little Richard's "Keep A-Knockin'". The track became a live favourite in concert and was performed as the opening number or as an encore and it t was released as a promotional single in the US, with stereo and mono mixes on either side of the disc.
"The Battle of Evermore" was written by Page on the mandolin, borrowed from Jones. Plant added lyrics inspired by a book he was reading about the Scottish Independence Wars. The track featured a duet between Plant and Fairport Convention's Sandy Denny, who provided the only female voice to be heard on a Led Zeppelin recording. Plant played the role of narrator in the song, describing events, while Denny sang the part of the town crier representing the people. "Stairway to Heaven" was mostly written by Page and most of the chord sequence was already worked out when recording started at Basing Street Studios. The lyrics were written by Plant at Headley Grange, about a woman who "took everything without giving anything back". The whole group contributed to the arrangement, such as Jones playing recorders on the introduction and Bonham's distinctive drum entry halfway through the piece. The song was considered the standout track on the album and was played on FM radio stations frequently, but the group resisted all suggestions to release it as a single. It became the centrepiece of the group's live set from 1971 onwards.
Next was "Misty Mountain Hop" was written at Headley Grange and featured Jones playing electric piano. Plant wrote the lyrics about dealing with the clash between students and police over drug possession. The title came from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. "Four Sticks" took its title from Bonham playing the drum pattern that runs throughout the song with four drum sticks, and Jones played analog synth. The track was more difficult to record than the other material on the album, requiring numerous takes. "Going to California" was a quiet acoustic number. It was written by Page and Plant about Californian earthquakes, and trying to find the perfect woman. The music was inspired by Joni Mitchell, of whom both Plant and Page were fans. The track was originally titled "Guide To California"; the final title came from the trip to Los Angeles to mix the album. "When the Levee Breaks" came from a blues song recorded by Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929. The track opened with Bonham's heavy unaccompanied drumming, which was recorded in the lobby of Headley Grange using two Beyerdynamic M 160 microphones suspended above a flight of stairs; output from these were passed to a limiter.
Led Zeppelin IV received overwhelming praise from critics who considered it the band's "most consistently good" album yet and praised the diversity of the songs: "out of eight cuts, there isn't one that steps on another's toes, that tries to do too much all at once." A "powerhouse album" that has the commercial potential of the band's previous three albums. A masterpiece of "heavy rock" cause the album showed them at the pinnacle of their songwriting, and regarded it as "the definitive Led Zeppelin and hence heavy metal album". Led Zeppelin IV is not just the greatest guitar album of the 70s, but the benchmark for every guitar band ever since
Led Zeppelin IV Track List:
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario